Introduction

[Manny]

As I was trying to put together a reading schedule, as well as searching for free online copies of the book, I realized there are two different versions of the book. I came across the fact that there were two editions published, the original in 1864 and Newman’s revised in 1865. The two seem to be structured differently. The 1865 version has five chapters and an extensive collection of notes and supplemental material. It was revised and edited out some of the material from the original. But later publishing of the 1865 revised edition provided extensive notes and supplemental material that was edited out. But it also included an extra chapter that the 1864 version did not contain.

Here are the 1865 five chapter titles:

Preface xiv.
1. History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833
2. History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
3. History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
4. History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
Section 1
Section 2
5. Position of my Mind since 1845

You can find the 1865 version online here. https://www.newmanreader.org/works/ap...

Here are the 1864 seven chapter titles:

Apologia pro Vita Sua
1. Mr. Kingsley's Method of Disputation
2. True Mode of meeting Mr. Kingsley
3. History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833
4. History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
5. History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
6. History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
Section 1.
Section 2.
7. General Answer to Mr. Kingsley

You can find the 1864 version online here. https://www.newmanreader.org/works/ap...

What you can see from a comparison between the tables of contents is that chapters three through six of the 1864 version are the same as chapters one through four of the 1865 version. Chapters one, two, and seven are omitted from the 1865 version but most publications today include those chapters as supplemental material. My Dover edition seems to.

So I think whichever edition you have you can probably find all the material except those that have the 1864 edition will not have chapter five of the 1865 edition. That’s because I believe chapter five was written after the 1864 publication.

Now what should we read? I propose we make our lives easier and just read the five chapters of the 1865 edition. Igf you have bought the 1864 edition and it does not include that fifth chapter—I suspect it might in the Appendixes—then you can read that chapter online at the link I provided.

So, first check to see which edition you have. My guess it’s the 1865 edition. I think that’s the most widely published. Second, is my plan acceptable?

If so, I propose the following reading schedule.

Week 1 (May 15-21): Chapter 1
Week 2 (May 22-28): Chapter 2
Week 3 (May 29-Jun 4) Chapter 3
Week 4 (Jun 5-11) Chapter 4, Section 1
Week 5 (Jun 12-18) Chapter 4, Section 2
Week 6 (Jun 19-25) Chapter 5

That’s a six week plan to complete the book. Frankly I don’t know how fast or slow the book reads. It was written in the 19th century, so the style is going to be a little different. And it was written by a very scholarly man, so I don’t know how difficult it will be. If we struggle (especially me!) to keep up with that schedule, we’ll slow down.

How does that all sound?

[Frances]

Thank you, Manny. High quality, as always.

[Christine in BoMass, USA]

Sounds good to me.

[Celia]

The 1864 version is .99 on Kindle. Since I love to do the Kindle highlighting see-able on GR, I bought it and will go with that.

[Madeleine]

I have the Gutenberg version which has an introduction. I apparently started reading it about 4 years ago and didn't finish because I only have highlights over the first 21 pages. Will probably stay with that one and try to keep up.

[Madeleine]

So, are we skipping all the debunking of Mr Kingsley and h st focusing on the Apologia from St. Newman himself?

[Manny]

Madeleine wrote: "So, are we skipping all the debunking of Mr Kingsley and h st focusing on the Apologia from St. Newman himself?"

If you want to read it, go ahead. Come here to Introduction to make your comments. Otherwise, there is enough material without it, and Newman himself didn’t include it upon revision.

[Madeleine]

Fine with me.. That makes it easier to keep up. Thanks.

[Manny]

As I was reading the first chapter, I realized how important Newman’s biography would be to understanding this work. After all it’s his conversion story, of a man who converted at mid-way in his life and wrote the conversion story almost twenty years later. I also remembered I had Bishop Robert Barron’s film biographies of those he considered “Pivotal Players” of Catholicism, and yes, John Henry Newman had his own hour and a half documentary. I just finished watching it, and that too was very helpful in putting Newman’s work into context. I wish I could share that DVD with all of us reading. If by chance you had bought Bishop Barron’s Pivotal Players series, and like me forgot Newman was included, I suggest you dig it out and watch it prior to or as you read Apologia Pro Vita Sua. I did a search on YouTube and unfortunately Word on Fire ministries did not make it free access. But you can watch this interview with Bishop Barron where he discusses many of the same themes in the Newman DVD.
https://youtu.be/IGEobTBd208

However, I did construct a timeline of Newman’s life, and I think this will be very helpful. Let me share that with you here.

1801 Birth (February 2).

1808 Enters school at Ealing.

1816 Religious Conversion to Evangelical Protestantism.

1822 At Oriel College, Oxford.

1825 Ordained Anglican Clergyman.

1828-43 Parish Vicar, St. Mary the Virgin.

1832-33 Trip to the Mediterranean.

1833 Start of Oxford Movement (Catholic Revival, High Anglicanism).

1845 Received into the Roman Catholic Church.

1847 Ordained Roman Catholic Priest.

1848 Founded English Oratory of St. Phillip Neri.

1854-58 Founder and Rector of Catholic University of Ireland.

1859 Opened Oratory School in Birmingham, England.

1864 Publishes Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

1879 Ordained Cardinal.

1889 Last Mass Celebrated, Christmas Day.

1890 Dies (August 11).

2019 Canonized Saint (October 13)

Feast Day: October 9th.

Now when you come across a year in your reading, and you can see Newman arranges the chapters by a particular year, you can figure out how old Newman is at the time by just subtracting one off the year because he was born in 1801. For instance, he was received into the Catholic Church in 1845, making him 44 years old at the time. He wrote Apologia Pro Vita Sua in 1864 making him 63 years old at the time. I hope this will help your reading.

[Frances]

Manny, this is so considerate of you. Thank you.

[Madeleine]

Thank you for this timeline. We do appreciate all the time you put into our studies to facilitate our reading and understanding!

[Celia]

Yes we do appreciate you, Manny. TY for all you do.

[Celia]

Madeleine wrote: "Thank you for this timeline. We do appreciate all the time you put into our studies to facilitate our reading and understanding!"
😃

[Madeleine]

I was especially impressed by Newman's description of one of his mentors, Dr. Whately:

"...as to Dr. Whately. I owe him a great deal. He was a man of generous and warm heart. He was particularly loyal to his friends, and to use the common phrase, "all his geese were swans." While I was still awkward and timid in 1822, he took me by the hand, and acted the part to me of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphatically, opened my mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason.".

It just strikes me as a lovely tribute from a grateful student. The kind of teacher we all would love to have had, to have at any age, or to be.

[Manny]

As part of the introduction I should write about how the Apologia was inspired. It seems that just before 1864 Newman had been wanting to write about his conversion, and was scribbling notes in preparation but an occasion came upon him that focused the memoirs. A certain Charles Kingsley, a novelist, historian, and ardent anti-Catholic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles... in a review of a recently published History of England written by James Anthony Froude, which strongly defended the English Reformation, insulted the Catholic clergy by twisting words of Newman prior to his conversion. Let me provide this extensive quote from a Newman biography I just bought (discounted at five bucks!) and just received in the mail.

In 1864, Newman broke his long public silence to respond to false accusations and the ridicule of Roman Catholic priests by Charles Kingsley, a novelist, Chaplain to the Queen, and professor of Modern History at Cambridge. In the January issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, which Newman received in late December 1863, Kingsley accused Newman of having stated as an Anglican that the Roman clergy did not consider truthfulness a virtue. Kingsley wrote, “Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be…”

After an unsatisfactory apology by Kingsley in the following issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, Newman began to write a pamphlet which eventually evolved into his famous autobiography. For some time, Newman had been seeking an opportunity to explain and defend his religious opinions and certain steps in his life. In this attack, he had found the occasion. He gathered old correspondences from Anglican friends and worked with remarkable intensity to relate the history of his religious beliefs. From late April to early June, he worked an average of over fifteen hours each day, writing in standing position at his desk at the library of the Birmingham Oratory. The result was a powerful autobiography that reflected Newman's passion for the truth and the evolution of his religious beliefs. Newman wrote his friend Richard Church about Kingsley’s accusation: “Thus, publically challenged, I must speak—and, unless I speak strongly, men won’t believe me in earnest.” He asked his friend, a witness of Newman’s last years as an Anglican, to “correct any fault of fact” in his statement. The Apologia Pro Vita Sua was read throughout the country by people of every religious creed. It was a vindication of Newman’s intellectual honesty and of the validity of the Catholic Creed. It remains today one of his most recognized and often cited works, the content of which recounted in this biography.
-pages 548-9, Passion For Truth: The Life of John Henry Newman, Fr, Juan R, Vélez, Tan Books, Second Edition, 2019.

So what I think is the key takeaway from this is that the dispute was not over some deep theological issue but over a crass statement by what today might be called a bigot. Newman found the opportunity to expose Kingsley and defend the burgeoning Catholic Church in England that was beginning to grow. Without further quoting the book—that was all done by hand and not copy and paste—this was a critical moment in the Catholic Renaissance in England. Catholics thanked Newman, Protestants read the Apologia and started to if not accept Catholics at least drop some of their erroneous notions, and a number of prominent Englishmen converted to Catholicism. Without Newman’s Apologia we might never have had the conversions of Gerard Manly Hopkins, Robert Hugh Benson, and G.K. Chesterton. Newman’s autobiography was one of those rare books that had a lasting societal impact.

[Kerstin]

Thanks, Manny!

[Kerstin]

I didn't realize that this is the very Charles Kingsley who wrote The Water Babies and Westward Ho! or, the Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, both of which I have yet to read.
When you look at the picture of the man he looks like your typical set-in-his-ways 19th century man. Not somebody I would want to cross ;-) Newman seems to have gotten the brunt of it and defanged him. Yikes, what drama!

[Manny]

Kerstin wrote: "When you look at the picture of the man he looks like your typical set-in-his-ways 19th century man. "

It's hard to say what is edgy or conventional in the appearance of people from the past. He's got those ridiculous sideburns, but I don't know the year they came into popularity. Without having a time context for style it's not so easy to tell. There was a time in my lifetime when tattoos were a sign of an edgy person. Now it's amazing how many people have them. So once they got popular, the edginess of them went away. And so the new edginess is not to have just one but to cover your entire body in a tattoos...lol. Kingsley also looks pretty stern in his photos. But that was the common way of posing for pictures for the 19th and well into the 20th century. I have a black and white picture of my grandfather that must have been taken before the 1950s and he looks pretty stern. But he was a very jovial and easygoing person. You can't really go by the picture.

[Kerstin]

I know what you're saying. Yet the disposition of a person gets etched into the face over time when youthful features are waning. It is not a complete picture of a person, of course. It is more of an intuitive reaction that's hard to put into words.

[Manny]

I'm behind on posting chapter 2. The long weekend actually made less time for reading! It will be up in a day or so.

[Patrick]

Just checking—are we going to update the schedule? We’re supposed to be finished by the end of this week, but I think it is advisable to push it 2 more weeks.

[Manny]

Peej, the schedule is shot. There are still three sections to read: chapter 4, part 1, chapter 4, part 2, and chapter 5. So it looks like at least three weeks. I'm hoping these sections are easier than the previous. I'm aiming for one week each but I bet there might be an extra week in there.

[Madeleine]

It's not an easy read, for sure. Glad I'm not the only behind person.

[Patrick]

How is everybody doing with the book? I haven’t heard from anybody for almost a week!

[Kerstin]

Peej wrote: "How is everybody doing with the book? I haven’t heard from anybody for almost a week!"

4th chapter - haven't finished it yet. Too much weeding, canning, and other summer-domestic stuff going on :-)

I know, we've been slow on this. Once we get into fiction next the pace should pick up.

[Manny]

Peej wrote: "How is everybody doing with the book? I haven’t heard from anybody for almost a week!"

Yeah, my fault Peej. I’ve been more busy than normal. Not only am I busy at work, but I have my son home without summer camp this year. So I have to keep him busy as well. I’ll get my comments on the last chapter out hopefully tonight and get the last chapter out shortly. My apologies.

[Patrick]

No apologies needed! I have 3 kids myself with a new house and job. Reading is practically the only thing I can do in my little spare time.

This is also a challenging biography.